Book Drives New York

Linden Silent Book Club: July Meetup

📚 Linden Silent Book Club: July Reading Meetup Join us for a relaxing Saturday of reading, community and bookish conversation! Date: Saturday, July 25 Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM Location: Inspo Nutrition, 27 E Elizabeth Ave., Linden, NJ 07036 Schedule: 11:00 – 11:30 AM 📖 Arrive, settle in, grab a drink or snack and chat with fellow readers 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM 🤫 Silent reading hour (B.Y.O.Book) 12:30 – 1:00 PM 💬 Optional discussion about what you're reading, book recommendations and general conversation Whether you're halfway through a physical novel, listening to an audiobook, reading manga or diving into nonfiction, all readers are welcome. Come as you are and enjoy a calm morning of books and community 📚 All readers welcome • No assigned reading • Free to attend

Booze & Books in Brooklyn

In addition to draft beers, **LoFi Bar in Park Slope** features craft cocktails, curated wines, and small bites. Non-alcoholic options are also available. Bring your latest read (and maybe a book light!) and **enjoy $1 off all drinks**. **[LoFi Bar](https://www.lofibrooklyn.com/)** is conveniently located near the F/G/R lines. Please note, this is not a private event and LoFi will be open to the public. **There is seating available for 40 people, available on a first-come basis.**

Manhattan Smutty Book Club - Obsidian by Laurann Dohner

The book for August is recommended by T - **[Obsidian (New Species Book 8) by Laurann Dohner](https://a.co/d/0hUMUfCB)**. Although it is book 8, you don't need to read the other books. This is a world where the government was infusing animal and human DNA creating various New Species beings. They escape and sue the government for rights. There you are all caught up. This book is about the female scientist and the comatose cat man she kidnaps to protect... gee I wonder how she's going to wake him up? (raised eyebrow) A bit of gross business: Someone was using the name of Smutty Book Club and its organizers to invite people to for-profit events. **If you receive any solicitation for an event or receive communication outside of Meetup, asking for money - it is a scam.** Please let us know if you see anything suspicious. A bit of good business: Our annual trip to the **Renaissance Festival will be Saturday, September 26th.** Stay tuned for the Meetup. Ok back to **[Obsidian by Laurann Dohner](https://a.co/d/0hUMUfCB).** Here's what the publisher says: *. Dr. Allison Baker is obsessed with saving the comatose New Species male. She has tried everything and there’s only one option left. Alli will break every rule and put her life in danger by tempting 880 to wake, using only her feminine scent and touch. She just has to kidnap him and crawl into bed with him to make it work.* *. 880 wakes in a different world with a small female who’s been sleeping beside him, caressing him and wrapping her sweet body around his, teasing his senses. He lies silent and still, listening and evaluating each arousing touch, fighting his body’s reaction. Hatred flares when he discovers she’s human, but Mercile stole everything from him so he decides it’s fair to take her in return.* *. But things quickly change and he wants her at his side and in his bed. 880 has chosen a new name—Obsidian—the personification of dark and dangerous. He’ll fight them all to keep Alli. No one will stand in his way.* The book for each month will be chosen at the book club before. So come with your suggestions! Please join us at Cornerstone Tavern, 961 2nd Ave, New York, NY (51st and 2nd) for great conversation, laughs, and friendship. Look for our signs, and listen for the laughter. We are often in the back of Cornerstone behind the curtain, which is actually a different restaurant called the Stags Head. We are also often upstairs at Stags Head. We start at 7pm, but feel free to come early before happy hour ends at 7. People usually start to drift in by 6:30pm.

Bookworms Back at Melting Cups (Queens)

The bookworms will be back at Melting Cups to kick off August after a hiatus. Join us on **Saturday morning** **(10 am)** at **[Melting Cups Café](https://www.meltingcups.com/)** Arrive, grab a drink ☕️, pastry 🥐 or both, and settle in the art gallery area (back) where the comfy couches are. Around 10:30 a.m., we’ll have casual introductions sharing what books we are reading. 📖🤓 We’ll wrap up by noon when the café gets busier. We'll try to keep this a recurring event every month or so.

The Bluest Eye discussion

**PLEASE NOTE:** The date of this meeting has been changed from the flyer sent at the beginning of the year. It is now **JULY 29**. We will discuss *The Bluest Eye* by Toni Morrison on Wed., July 29 at 7 p.m. at Omakase Ramen, 95-34 Queens Blvd., Rego Park. It's on the south side of Queens Blvd. between 63rd Ave. and 63rd Drive, just west of the 63rd/Rego Park stop on the R and M trains. The Q60 bus stops nearby. You can see the menu at https://www.omakaseramentogo.com/.

July 2026 Book Club: Great Big Beautiful Life

"Skippy Dies," by Paul Murray

Our fourth-place pick is our longest book yet! This one comes in at \~660 pages so there's an extra week between meetings to finish it. Our sister book club (the long reads group) loved The Bee Sting by the same author, so we have high hopes for this one! **From Goodreads:** A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies wrings every last drop of humour and hopelessness out of life, love, mermaids, M-theory, the poetry of Robert Graves, and all the mysteries of the human heart. Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublin's venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop? Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory? Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy’s rival in love? Or could "the Automator", the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school, have something to hide? Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin "MC Sexecutioner” Flynn to basketball-playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation.

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont

Start your weekend at New York Historical's library

The [New York Historical](https://www.nyhistory.org/) invites you to the Reading Room of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library! Even though we are meeting in the museum's library, there will not be books available for you to silently read. **Please bring your own book.** Sometimes the museum has events that can be noisy. If you have trouble reading with noise in the background, you may want to bring headphones. **IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR FINDING THE GROUP INSIDE THE NY HISTORICAL** 1. Enter the building through the Central Park West entrance and go through Admissions, where you will get an entry sticker. 2. You may be asked for a donation but it’s Pay As You Wish so you may pay as much or as little as you like. 3. Once you get the sticker, you may head up the grand staircase opposite Admissions. 4. As soon as you get to the second floor, you'll see the entrance to the Reading Room on the left. We'll have a sign noting the room is reserved for Silent Book Club. Readers are welcome to **hang out in the Museum until closing at 8:00 PM**. **About the library** The Patricia D. Klingenstein Library is one of the oldest, most distinguished research libraries in the United States and a vital center of research into the history of New York and the nation. The Library's historic Reading Room has been a key stop for generations of scholars and researchers.

Repetition by Vigdis Hjorth

One of the foremost writers of her generation explores the strength and pain of being young As winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness, exposing a story both utterly familiar and desperately strange. It was the year she first got drunk, the year she first had sex with a boy. She was watched like a hawk by an anxious mother and a silent, distant father. It was a year of typical teenage fixation and typical teenage frivolity, and of all the usual parental fretting. Until something else took hold, and her family made an unspoken decision and a terrible sacrifice. Only now, decades later, can these events come close to being comprehended.

It’s No joke it’s April new book club book It Girl ..Allison Pataki

Okay so many of our members are 9-5 during weekdays and miss our mall walks in preparation for our outdoor activities for evening and weekends this spring So while we wait on Mother Nature Let’s exercise our mind. I’ve selected The book “It Girl” The story of the original Gibson girl the woman who captured the imagination of new yorkers while Becoming the face of beauty but the rise to the top was filled with heart ache ,pain determation and murder, encountering power hungry men , and the crime of the century . This book will lead to a future trip to learn more about the real life inspiration for this book Meetup time frame for book readers is April 1 st to end of may. But site won’t allow that to be posted. So please write finish date I. Your personal calendar

Wild Seed, by Octavia Butler

Get a copy [here on Bookshop ](https://bookshop.org/a/80117/9781538751480)to donate 10% to our bookclub! **Two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together and changing the destiny of the human race.** Doro knows no higher authority than himself. An ancient spirit with boundless powers, he possesses humans, killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. With a lonely eternity ahead of him, Doro breeds supernaturally gifted humans into empires that obey his every desire. He fears no one--until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is an entity like Doro and yet different. She can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. She uses her powers to cure her neighbors and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her. No one poses a true threat to Anyanwu--until she meets Doro. The moment Doro meets Anyanwu, he covets her; and from the villages of 17th-century Nigeria to 19th-century United States, their courtship becomes a power struggle that echoes through generations, irrevocably changing what it means to be human.